The Polish team, comprising 149 firefighters and 49 vehicles, set out on their return journey on Monday morning, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
After leaving the village of Vilia near Athens before 7 a.m., the motorcade is heading back to Poland through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, according to officials.
The head of Poland’s State Fire Service, Andrzej Bartkowiak, said on the X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter: “Another international rescue operation of the GFFFV unit [Ground Forest Fire Fighting using Vehicles], has been completed. In the morning they set off on their journey back to the country. Our pride! Thank you! Return safely.”
On Saturday, the Polish firefighting team said the wildfire situation had improved considerably and they were scheduled to head back to Poland on Monday, the PAP news agency reported.
The Polish government had offered to send firefighters to help Greece combat forest fires, and the offer was accepted by the Greek Cabinet on July 18, according to officials.
The wildfires spread through Greece earlier this month, fuelled by wind gusts, and causing human casualties as well as “massive environmental and economic damage,” the European Union’s executive Commission said.
Around 20,000 people, locals as well as tourists, were evacuated from the island of Rhodes, and several hundred from Corfu and other places endangered by the wildfires, according to officials.
The forest fires killed at least five people and burned some 50,000 hectares of Greece's woodland, public broadcaster Polish Radio's IAR news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, ec.europa.eu